Life Was Strange
by SparklingOblivion
Summary: A little excerpt from Max's life after the timeline has returned to normal and everything is doing just fine. -SPOILERS- Slight Max x Warren


Arcadia Bay was safe. No cyclones, no dead birds, no beached whales or deranged students or psychopathic egomaniacal teachers. Just a normal town, filled with normal people, dealing with normal everyday things. Time droned on for everyone else as if the town hadn't been torn apart.

Even the students at Blackwell, the most traumatized of all, carried on with their lives without worry. It was like Alyssa had never fallen into a burning building, Evan had never been fatally wounded by siding flung by the harsh winds, Kate had never decided to jump off the roof of the girl's dorm.

All of that had been erased.

Except for Max.

She had retained what others had lost. Every heartbreaking memory, every sound, every terror filled moment in the dark. Chloe being shot, Warren fighting Nathan for her, finding the decomposing body of Rachel Amber. It was all glued to the wall of her mind, hanging right alongside the nightmare that was the Dark Room. Time had been repaired, it had let loose its hold on Arcadia Bay, allowed the wrongs to its course be corrected and set back into everyday routine. But for some twisted, cruel, sadistic reason, it had decided to hold on to Max.

Despite the rewind rendering her experiences with Jefferson in the Dark Room being erased, Max still felt the intense fear that came with it. The flash of a camera made her cringe. Bracelets reminded her of the straps locked tight around her wrists. She couldn't sit alone without noise, lest the brutal memories return, those of listening to Nathan's final words through a voice mail, realizing Victoria was dead, and the sound of Chloe crying as she begged Max to kill her to set time straight again. It was a dark aura hovering around her head.

Kate was a great help, bringing Max tea and cookies, sharing notes with her, helping with projects that just couldn't make sense when she was sitting in a classroom formerly haunted by Jefferson. Warren prepared endless hours of music and movies, brought popcorn, and was constantly pulling her out to old school movie marathons, superhero movie premiers, and dinner at Two Whales before barricading themselves in his room to watch bad films. Dana and Juliet had stopped by when she was holed up in her room, fighting off the memories with loud music and looking through the scrapbooks of photos Joyce had given her. Even some of the Vortex club members had come through. Courtney delivering lunch courtesy of her and Victoria, Taylor stopping by to talk about her mom and classwork, even Hayden, Trevor, and Zach stopped by every once in awhile asking she she'd like to share a joint. They were all good friends, all understood that she was having a hard time dealing with the death of her best friend.

It helped when they found the room and all its pictures. In another cruel twist of the timeline, Jefferson's photo collection was complete with Max and Victoria as headline features. The police assumed Jefferson had kidnapped them both months before, putting together the pieces of his victims as they prepared for the trial that would sentence him. She no longer had to hide her pain when they announced the pictures had been found. A few less risque photos had been chosen for a briefing on the news and in the papers. Pictures of Max, Kate, Victoria, and Rachel popped up in headlines across the country, right next to a mugshot of Mark Jefferson. But the newfound understanding didn't make her feel any better. If anything it made her feel stared at, victimized, judged.

They couldn't really understand anyway, not all of it. They would never walk through the nightmarish landscape time had put her up against, been forced to tell a psychopath she loved him, forced to walk to the lighthouse, through the accustionary beams of her peers, only to end up in the snow globe and watching William change Chloe's life forever. In that snow globe she watched him leave, saw Chloe cry as she dialed the number Max had given her more times than she could count, and then as David moved into her life. Rachel, Joyce, David, William; they all lived just beyond the walls of that snow globe, replaying the same mistakes over and over again.

In a few years,she might forget about all this, move on to a nice college. Jumpstart her photography career. Maybe get a little more serious with Warren, regardless of the dirty looks Brooke still shot her. She could have a normal life. A simple life. But for right now…

Life was strange.


End file.
